Farishta (18 page)

Traffic had come to a complete standstill when we entered the boulevard that circled the Blue Mosque. Directly in front of us was a rusting yellow taxi with a mottled paint job that resembled the skin of an overripe banana. It was packed with young men. Inside the trunk, its lid propped open with a piece of wood, were two women concealed under white burkas.

Women riding in the trunk of a car were not an unusual sight in Mazāri-Sharīf. A woman driving a car was unheard of.

The two leaned toward each other, their heads bobbing in animated conversation, their exposed fingers pointing in my direction. When the traffic jam cleared and we began to move, both women lifted their burkas, revealing two young, heavily made-up faces. They smiled at Fuzzy and me and gave us an enthusiastic thumbs-up before dropping their burkas as the taxi sped away.

“Beautiful girls.” Fuzzy whistled. “I guess you gave them something to talk about when they get home tonight.” There was no comment from Rahim in the backseat.

When we arrived at the prison, Fuzzy reluctantly stayed behind to guard the Beast while Rahim and I crossed a muddy plaza and walked through the heavily guarded front entrance.

“Why are we coming to this prison, Angela-
jan
?” asked Rahim as a guard escorted us through several locked gates.

“My embassy wants me to investigate reports of abuse of female prisoners.”

“There are women in here?” Rahim seemed surprised. We had passed several corridors of cells filled with sullen young men, but had not seen a single woman.

The guard pulled open a metal gate and motioned for me to go through. When Rahim tried to follow, the guard shoved him back.

“No men in the women’s quarters,” he said in a menacing voice.

“But the American woman does not speak our language. I am her interpreter,” said Rahim, explaining to me in English the guard’s objections, which I had already understood.

“No men,” the guard repeated.

“He won’t let me go in with you,” said Rahim, glaring at the guard in frustration.

I had been dreading just such a moment for weeks and hadn’t worked out a solution. I couldn’t reveal my knowledge of Dari, but I was loath to leave the prison without completing my assignment—especially when I finally had the opportunity to do something constructive.

I was about to give up and leave with Rahim when a striking young woman poked her head around the corner from inside the female wing of the prison. “Does someone need translation?” she asked in heavily accented English. Her glossy black hair was uncovered and tumbled long and loose over her shoulders.

“Hello, madam. I am Nilofar. May I be of service?” Her liquid brown eyes flicked from me to Rahim, who seemed to have taken root where he stood.

“Do you work here? ” I asked after I had introduced myself.

Her eyes continued to jump between my face and Rahim’s.

“No, madam,” she answered, smiling at me with the straightest, whitest teeth I had ever seen. “I am a law student and I come here to help women accused of marriage crimes.”

“Marriage crimes?” I asked.

“All of the women in this prison are here for marriage crimes,” she said grimly. “Come with me. You can meet them and their children. They will tell you their stories.”

There had been no mention during my many meetings in Kabul about women being thrown into jail for violating their marriage vows. Perhaps that was because all of my briefers had been men.

“There are children in here with them?” I asked.

Rahim stood silently in the doorway, watching the two of us talk as the guard continued to block his way.

“Your son must wait outside,” said Nilofar, flashing her radiant smile at Rahim. He blushed and looked away. “I will take you in to see the women, madam.”

“He’s not my son, he’s my interpreter,” I told Nilofar. Turning toward Rahim, who now looked like he was in actual physical pain, I added, “I guess you’ll have to wait with Fuzzy. I’ll be out in an hour.”

The poor boy had been struck dumb by the unexpected appearance of this beautiful young woman, but I could see he was also upset that she would be taking his place as my interpreter.

Rahim parted his lips to speak, but pressed them together again as his eyes darkened. He turned and walked away from us without a word.

I followed Nilofar into the cell while an unarmed male guard closed the door behind us and flipped the bolt to seal us in.

Faded blue carpets covered the cement floor. There were twelve women sitting on threadbare cushions that lined the four walls while their children played in the center of the room.

A female warden in a gray uniform was sitting on the cushions, talking with two prisoners who were breastfeeding their babies. Some of the women looked old enough to be grandmothers. It was freezing. A small charcoal brazier in the center of the room provided the only warmth. But even with these deprivations, the women looked clean and well fed.

Nilofar explained to me that the Afghan judicial system, even under the new constitution, did not favor women. Legally, they could marry without parental consent after their sixteenth birthday. In reality, local custom and traditional Sharia law dictated that parents choose the husband, negotiate the bride-price with the groom and his family, and hand their daughter over at any age in a contractual arrangement—a virtual sale euphemistically referred to as a “marriage.” Even an educated woman like Nilofar was subject to these customs, she told me with a grim smile.

“I study law at Balkh University in Mazār-i-Sharīf,” said Nilofar as she took a seat on an empty cushion and motioned for me to sit next to her. “One of my professors told us about these women. They have no lawyers and no family to help, so I come each week to talk to them and try to find a way to get them out or at least make their life in this prison a little better.”

“Do other law students come?” I asked.

“No, they are afraid to anger the women’s families. Fathers and husbands can have their daughters and wives convicted and sent to prison if they believe they have shamed the family by refusing to marry or running away. They don’t like it when others interfere.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.

She looked up at me with her luminous dark eyes. “My grandmother says if you are afraid to do what is right, you might as well be dead or in jail yourself. She is right, and no, I am not afraid,” Nilofar said defiantly.

“I’ve been told that some of the women in this prison are being mistreated. Do you know if this is true? ”

“Madam, these women are not mistreated. The female guards try to help them, but they have little to give.” Nilofar told me that although the female wardens were paid only twenty dollars per month, they often used their own money to buy fresh fruits and vegetables for the imprisoned women and children, who rarely had visitors.

“This girl,” she said, gesturing toward a young woman in a green head scarf, watching listlessly as her infant son chewed on a worn rubber ball, “has been accused not of killing her husband, but of knowing who the killer is. Her husband was forty-five, and she was fifteen when her parents forced her to marry. The man beat her frequently.

“She thinks her twin brother came to her house in the night and killed her husband, but she wants to protect him from her husband’s powerful clan, so she will say nothing. When her baby turns three, her husband’s relatives will claim the child because it is a boy. They will take it from her. She has threatened to kill herself when they do.”

A toothless old woman snored loudly as she dozed openmouthed on her back in a far corner of the room. The long veil covering her head and arms had slipped off, revealing a horribly disfigured face and stumps where there should have been fingers on both of her hands.

“This woman was given by her parents in marriage to a commander in Chahar Bolak when she was thirteen,” Nilofar continued, her eyes glistening. “They say she was very beautiful. Her husband was fifty and had three other wives. One of his men brought home stolen jet fuel for the women to cook with. They thought it was kerosene. It exploded in their faces, setting them all on fire. Two of the wives were killed. This woman’s two young children, who were standing next to her, also died. She burned her fingers off trying to get them away from the fire. Her husband accused her of murdering his wives and his children. Once she left the hospital, she was brought here. That was three years ago.”

“How old is she, Nilofar?” I asked, looking at the woman’s raw gums and scarred lips.

“That one is twenty-eight years old,” she said.

These women were not being mistreated in prison. The whole system was rigged against them. Without a powerful patron who could bribe the appropriate officials, they had no way out.

“Nilofar-
jan,
I wish to speak with the American woman,” said the elderly warden, easing her bulk onto the cushion next to mine. Nilofar hovered nearby to provide the translation, which I did not need.

The warden launched into a plea on behalf of the silent staring women who lined the walls of their prison home. “Madam, I have worked as a guard in the Mazār-i-Sharīf prison for seventeen years. Under the Taliban, most women were only kept here for a few days until they were taken to the soccer field and stoned to death. Anyone could accuse them and there were no courts or trials.

“The women in here have had their trials and they are safe under this government, but most will never leave or they will be sent to the prison in Kabul. Can’t you help them? They are not criminals.”

“I’ll be reporting what I’ve learned to my embassy in Kabul and . . .” The words felt empty to me and I struggled to say them with any conviction. A male guard rapped his baton loudly on the bars of the women’s cell and put an end to my conversation with the warden. He insisted that we leave immediately.

Nilofar walked with me to the parking lot, where Fuzzy and Rahim were entertaining an excited gaggle of little boys next to the Beast.

As soon as we exited the prison, she casually draped a loose head scarf over her hair. She was making a silent but courageous statement by refusing to cover herself with the burka, which was still worn in public by almost every woman in Mazār. While her boldness would not result in any formal punishment, as it would have under the Taliban, it nevertheless exposed her to constant harassment and to the simmering anger of traditional Afghan men who still preferred their women hidden from view.

“Now you see the hopeless legal problems these women face,” she said as we approached the Beast. “Perhaps you will be able to help them.”

“You’re a good woman,” I said, squeezing her hand. “The embassy will receive my report tomorrow, but I honestly don’t think there’s much my government will do for them.”

The query from the minister of women’s affairs had been only about the possible mistreatment of female prisoners, not about the much broader issue of basic rights for Afghan women or jail cells filled with marriage “criminals.” My report that there was no evidence of abuse would close the case as far as Plawner and the minister were concerned. I looked down with a sense of shame and regret at this determined young woman, who continuously put herself in harm’s way when all I had to do was type out another report and hit the SEND button.

Fuzzy had climbed into the passenger seat of the Beast and was tapping on his watch to remind me of the time. Rahim remained standing outside, his hand on the open car door, trying not to stare at Nilofar.

“Do you need a ride home? ” I asked Nilofar.

Her somber mood vanished as she glanced up at Rahim with a mischievous smile. “I was going to take a taxi, but if the young man would not mind to drop me at the university, I am most grateful.” Rahim, whom she thought would be driving us back to the PRT, looked away in embarrassment.

“Hop in and let’s go,” I said, climbing into the driver’s seat. Fuzzy wedged his rifle below the window so it was out of sight, and Rahim, his eyes downcast, held the rear door open for Nilofar.

“You are driving? ” she asked me with a puzzled laugh. “Is this allowed? ”

Rahim looked at Nilofar and said in Dari, “With Angela-
jan,
everything is allowed.”

“This will sadly be my last meeting with all of you,” said Harry to those of us who had taken our assigned seats for his weekly five P.M. staff meeting in the officers’ mess. Sergeant Major had decided in late February to print out our names and titles on pieces of construction paper and place them on the chairs he thought we should occupy.

There were always visitors and new arrivals and never enough chairs. He wanted to ensure that the regulars were able to sit down quickly and avoid the endless dance of musical chairs that delayed the start of every meeting. His plan had met with some resistance, but it worked.

My designated location was between the ops officer and the quartermaster. With our new seat assignments, I found myself at every meeting directly across the room from Major Davies, whose staring made me painfully self-conscious. He radiated disapproval at what I’m sure he felt were my brash American ways, and he continued to avoid my presence outside the confines of these formal meetings.

“My replacement, Colonel Robert Jameson, will be arriving with our new Foreign Office diplomat, Richard Carrington, next Monday,” said Harry. “We, unfortunately, won’t have a formal handover, but I’m sure you’ll make them both welcome,” he added, before extending his usual request that each of the “regulars” spend a few minutes telling everyone what they were working on. It was going to be a long meeting. I raised my eyes and met the major’s expressionless gaze.

The meeting dragged on until supper. I ate quickly with Fuzzy and Jenkins in the soldiers’ dining hall, which still felt more welcoming to me than the officers’ mess, and rushed back to Harry’s office to lock up a sensitive report I’d left on my desk. He was packing for his morning departure.